Men of Letters

I used to think the three letter acronym (TLA) was a yuppie fixation. This opinion was reinforced by a cruel boss who for years mystified me by sending e-mails which read something like: “FYI & A. PFA your KPIs for rest of FY. YTD review dates TBD.”

That particular one kept me busy for weeks. FYI (“for your information”) has slipped into layman parlance by now, so I had little trouble deciphering it. The suffix &A, I deduced cleverly, meant “and action”. KPI was probably “key performance indicators” or some such that I was supposed to achieve for the balance of the financial year (FY). The other three flummoxed me completely, and it took the help of an online dictionary, a much younger colleague and some serious career counseling to figure out that PFA was not some ingredient used in the manufacture of plastic, but “please find attached”; YTD meant “year to date” and the ominous sounding TBD just an innocuous “to be decided”. The little weasel was just letting me know that my half-yearly performance review was pending. Couldn’t he have just said so?

But I digress. Like I was saying, it’s not just the too-clever-by-half MBA crowd that indulges in this diminutive skullduggery these days, it’s virtually everybody. And by “virtually” I mean to place the blame squarely on this culture of SMS, MMS and e-mail forwards (EMF?) so prevalent in these enlightened yet oh-so-illiterate times. Like, who wants to suffer CTS (carpal tunnel syndrome) by typing out actual, you know, words, dude? In the interests of keeping this piece readable, and whatever readers I may have left agog, there’s a compendium of all TLAs used in this piece at EOC (end of chapter). Proceed at your own risk.

I studied IOC as an undergrad, and realize that using certain acronyms in technical contexts is unavoidable. It’s not a pretty sight watching a Maharashtrian lecturer attempting to pronounce “trinitrotoluene”, for example, and TNT is a nice alternative. And I’ll admit to having experienced a frisson of pleasure at disdainfully tossing out a “CTC” or “LAB” from time to time, knowing that the non-chemical Alis around me had no idea what I was talking about. It’s much the same with doctors, who I am told get their smug expressions more from the fact that their patients have no idea what they’re talking about than any genuine belief that their sworn duty is to save all of humankind. One has only to watch the occasional episode of ER to know this is true. How I have envied the handsome lab-coated physician on duty barking to his admiring nurses, “Start an IV line, 6 cc DTC, with a dash of ABX, PQD and olive oil to taste. Then get a CT, an MRI, a rectal BWG and ask for a consult from OBGYN”. The icing on the cake of course is to be able to take a barely-there pause at the end of it all and issue a terse “stat” (not even Michael Crichton knows what stat means; it’s like those army guys going “roger” after everything they say. I mean, who the hell is Roger?)

But in India, the disease isn’t limited to technical fields, it’s everywhere. Take banks, for example. In any civilized country, banks operate under a strict code under which their names can only be formed of a permutation of the following words, no doubt handed down by a stuffy magistrate of the early1600s: Trust, Credit, Standard, Mutual, Chartered, Savings, Financial, National, City (spelling variants permitted), Group, Direct, North, South, Commercial and if you’re really rich, Chase and Morgan. In India, where codes are meant to be broken, any bank which attempts to name itself by this convention is derided as elitist and driven out of the country before sundown. So instead you have the Marketing divisions of banks egging on their otherwise conservative, suit-clad colleagues to come with “something different” from what’s already been taken, at a glance: ICICI, IDBI, HDFC, OBC, PNB, SBI,CBoP, BoB (the small “o” is much desirable and the envy of banks with no “of” in their names), BoI, CBI, UBI, DCB, SIB, TJSB, GSBN, SVC and the ubercool SBoB&J.

Our elite educational institutions are no rabbits in this regard; you have IIT, IIM, IISc, AIIMS, DCE, JNU, JMI, BHU, UDCT, VJTI, SPCE, JU and the awe-inspiring JIPMER. Can you imagine a college going under the name of “Ramrao Adhik Institute of Technology” and actually having a single student on its rolls? Not unless that’s shortened to a cool “RAIT”, you can’t.

There’s a theory that the South Indians are responsible for this mess. Anecdotal evidence seems to confirm this. Take politicians- chief ministers of the southern states have always been highly lettered- NTR &YSR in Andhra; MGR in Tamil Nadu; and Karnataka’s HDDG, whose extra letter ensured not only dynastic rule for life in his home state but also prime ministership of the country for a while. Surprisingly, Chandrababu Naidu never became “CBN”, which I suspect is the chief reason for his rapid descent from power, poor farmers notwithstanding. But in the South, where choice of names is restricted, much like banks abroad, to permutations of the following: Rama, Murthy, Balaji, Subramanya(n), Kumar, Swami, Laxmi (spelling variants permitted), Narayan(a), S(h)iva, Krishna and if you’re convent-educated, Arvind, using initials I guess has a practical application. My office has at least three Ramaswamys, going under the guise of PLR, NSR and TMR.

The North, bless them, is less obessed with acronyms-as-names. You never hear anyone in Bihar cursing LPY or praising RVP as the saviour of the dalits (OBCs). But that doesn’t stop them from naming their political parties that way. So you have INC, BJP, BSP, RJD, NCP, HVP, all of which were born in the cow belt, to keep their southie colleagues in the DMK, AIADMK, JD(S), JD(U), KC(M) company. When more than one of these parties comes to power, they feel the need to create a new acronym, or it just isn’t worth it. So, after five years of NDA rule, we now have UPA at the centre. It’s all very confusing to a non-Indian.

Acronyms are also scary things when used properly. Would RDX be as fear-inducing by any other name? (imagine the headline “Twenty tons of cyclonite smuggled in through Ratnagiri coast”- tame!) We know that every act of terrorism on Indian soil is connected with LeT, JeM, ISI and SoB (formerly SIMI). We know this because the MEA and RAW tell us so. And we’re scareder for it.

Of course, some acronyms are just plain unfortunate. ASSOCHAM sounds more like a secret society of sodomisers than the nation’s highest body of commerce, if you ask me. NABARD suggests an insult at one’s malehood rather than the development bank it is, TRAI seems to be more an exercise in futility (“We TRAI harder”) than a telecom regulatory body. An acquaintance of mine started the Bombay Rock Association with visions of resurrecting the spirit of Indi-rock, alas now dead in this era of remix and regurgitation, only to have it backfire when a tabloid reported “BRA opens in Ghatkopar” with apparently no irony.

One defender of the faith protests that even Wodehouse scattered acronyms liberally through his works, so what are you moaning on about? (That’s true- “Fetch me a refreshing b&s, Jeeves” was something that Bertie Wooster was quite apt to say). But he used it for comic effect dammit, I protest. He sniffs that if it’s good for PGW (“PeeGeeWee”no less), it’s good enough for me and you. I confess I lost it and bonked him on the noggin with my Empress of Blandings omnibus.

For my part, I refuse to part of this charade anymore. From today, I renounce the use of acronyms, three-lettered or otherwise, unless forced to do so at gunpoint. Just once request though. If this gets out to my boss, I may be forced to hand in my three-month notice (3MN). So be a sweetie and keep this strictly OTR.

That’s off-the-record, dumbass.


Compendium of TLAs

Corporate
FYI: for your information
FYI&A: for your information and action
PFA/E: please find attached/enclosed
KPI/KRA: key performance indicator/ key responsibility area
YTD: year to date
TBD: to be decided
MBA: Masters in Business Administration

Chemical
IOC: industrial organic chemistry
CTC: carbon tetrachloride, an industrial solvent
LAB: linear alkyl benzene, an ingredient in producing petrochemicals

Banking
ICICI: Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India
IDBI: Industrial Development Bank of India
HDFC: Housing Development Finance Corporation
OBC: Oriental Bank of Commerce
PNB: Punjab National Bank
SBI: State Bank of India
CBoP: Centurion Bank of Punjab
BoB: Bank of Baroda
BoI: Bank of India
CBI: Central Bank of India (which strangely enough isn’t the central bank, which would be the RBI, Reserve Bank of India)
UBI: Union Bank of India (not to be confused with United Bank of India, which also exists)
DCB: Development Credit Bank
SIB: South Indian Bank
TJSB: Thane Janata Sahakari Bank (for my Pakistani friends, sahakari means “co-operative” and not “vegetarian”(shakahari)
GSBN: Guardian Sahakara Bank Niyamita (don’t ask)
SVC: Shamrao Vitthal Cooperative Bank
SBoB&J: State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur

Education
IIT: Indian Institute of Technology
IIM: Indian Institute of Management
AIIMS: All-India Institute of Medical Sciences
DCE: Delhi College of Engineering
JNU: Jawaharlal Nehru University
JMI: Jamia Milia Islamia
BHU: Benares Hindu University
UDCT: University (of Mumbai) Department of Chemical Technology
VJTI: Veermata Jijabai Technical Institute, formerly Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute (Mumbai)
SPCE: Sardar Patel College of Engineering (Mumbai)
JU: Jadhavpur University (Kolkata)
JIPMER: Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research (Pondicherry)

Politics
NTR: Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao, late, former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh
YSR: Dr. Yeduguri Sandinti Rajasekhara Reddy, current chief minister, Andhra Pradesh
MGR: Marudur Gopalamenon Ramachandran, late, former CM of Tamil Nadu
HDDG: Hardanahalli Doddegowda Deve Gowda, former Chief Minister of Karnataka and Prime Minister of Indian union. Currently, his son Kumaraswamy is CM, Karnataka
LPY (not in use): Laloo Prasad Yadav, currently Union Minister for Railways, former CM of Bihar
RVP (not in use): Ram Vilas Paswan, politician
OBC: Other Backward Classes
INC: Indian National Congress
BJP: Bharatiya Janata Party
BSP: Bahujan Samaj Party
RJD: Rashtriya Janata Dal
NCP: National Congress Party
HVP: Haryana Vikas Party
DMK: Dravida Munnetra Kazagham
AIADMK: All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham
JD(S)/(U): Janata Dal (Secular)/(United)
KC(M): Kerala Congress (Mani)
NDA: National Democratic Alliance (translation BJP and its tattus)
UPA: United Progressive Alliance (true to name, neither progressive nor united, INC and its tattus)

Terrorism
LeT: Lashkar e Toybaba
JeM: Jaish e Mohammed
ISI: Inter Services Intelligence (which is about as tame an acronym as…)
RAW: Research & Analysis Wing
SoB: son of a bitch
SIMI: Students Islamic Movement of India
MEA: Ministry of External Affairs

Miscellaneous
ASSOCHAM: Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry
NABARD: National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development
TRAI: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India